This award supports an REU / RET site at Purdue University with the objective of providing 12 undergraduate physics majors from across the country and 2 teachers with a ten-week immersion in a genuine research project. The program includes an interdisciplinary science seminar series, two required public talks by students on their research, and field trips to national facilities at Fermilab and Argonne. The weekly seminar combines these Physics students with other Purdue REU students from Biomedical Engineering, Chemistry, Materials Engineering, and Electrical & Computer Engineering to emphasize interdisciplinary opportunities and interactions among students across many fields. Equal numbers of women and men will be recruited, with special efforts to increase the applicant pool and participation of under-represented minorities. The goals of this program are to instill in each student a first-hand knowledge of the nature of research, the broad range of disciplines in which physicists can make an impact, and the importance of peer interactions in science. The RET participants' research projects will be reflected in their subsequent classroom teaching, perhaps inspiring their own students about careers in research. The participants in this program will collaborate with their mentors and other researchers to advance the state-of-the-art in nanophysics studies of electrons in reduced dimensional conductors, the dynamical behavior in proteins, the atomic mechanisms of photosynthesis, the use of cosmogenic nuclei as chronometers in geoscience, particle detectors with improved hardness and resolution, detectors for TeV radiation, novel application of nuclear detectors for sensing hazardous materials, analysis of x-ray satellite data from compact sources, the fundamental nature of nuclear decay, enhanced long-baseline imaging for radio astronomy, seismic propagation in structures of geologic interest, and other current topics of importance. This award is co-funded by the Division of Physics and the Office of Multidisciplinary Activities in the Mathematical and Physical Sciences Directorate.
